Nintendo: Japan's Second Most Profitable Company. Period.

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Nintendo Co Ltd roared past Canon Inc to become Japan's second most valuable company behind Toyota Motor Corp, driven by its hot-selling Wii game console and DS handheld player.

Nintendo's Wii has so far outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 by a large margin since their launches late last year as Nintendo's strategy to expand the gaming population by offering easy-to-play but innovative games has proved a big success. Shares in Nintendo were up 2.6 percent at 58,900 yen in afternoon trade on Tuesday, bringing its market value to 8.34 trillion yen ($72.6 billion), surpassing Canon's market capitalization of 8.20 trillion yen.

All because of two hardware products. I'm sure everyone knew that Nintendo was now rolling in cash. But come on! For an industry where everyone else loses money on hardware sales, this is ridiculous, even if Nintendo has always sold hardware for profit.